Palaeoloxodon Huaihoensis Skeleton
Pleistocene, about 100,000 to 10,000 years ago
The first thing you meet inside the Life Science Hall is an elephant. A complete mounted skeleton of Palaeoloxodon huaihoensis, an extinct straight tusked elephant, stands in the entrance lobby with its long tusks sweeping forward and its skull high above your head. The animal lived in eastern China during the last ice age and takes its name from the Huai River, where fossils of the species were found. Its relatives roamed as far as Taiwan when sea levels were low and the island was joined to the mainland; dredged fossils of similar elephants turn up regularly in the Penghu channel.
Look at the skull, which is much higher and narrower than that of a living elephant, with a distinctive ridge across the forehead that anchored the massive neck muscles needed to carry the tusks. The tusks themselves are nearly straight rather than curved, which is what gives this group its common name. The limb bones are thick columns built to hold an animal that was taller than a modern African elephant. Compare it with the models of living elephants and mammoths elsewhere in the hall to see how much variety the elephant family once had.
The skeleton was assembled from fossils found in the Huai River region of eastern China, which gave the species its name. It sits at the threshold of the museum's galleries about the story of life, a reminder that giant animals walked here only a few thousand years ago and that the island's fauna is a product of changing climate and sea levels. A memorable detail is the sheer height of the mount, which is designed so that visitors pass beneath the tusks on their way into the hall.
Did You Know? Fishing boats in the Penghu channel still drag up bones of ice age elephants that walked across to Taiwan when the strait was dry land.
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